Ruby Princess - bad experience

We were disappointed with this cruise. We went on the Crown Princess last year and had a great time.

Good - variety of food in the buffet, teen area for the kids were good, the comedy shows were very fun, whole family enjoyed it. The soft serve and pizzeria were good.

Bad - our cabin steward was not very friendly, asking for an extra towel or bucket of ice was like pulling teeth to get it done. One of my kid had a nose bleed and the sheets got several drops of blood on it but when he made the bed, he didn't change the sheets (even when we left it on top for him to see). We came back late that night so just slept. Next day, he still didn't change it until we hunted him down to do it - he was not happy. Our next door neighbor on the cruise were able to have their cabin steward put their twin beds together under the bunk bed. Our cabin steward refused, saying he couldn't do it because of regulation. We showed him the room next to us and he still refused. So I had to do it myself. I knew he was too lazy to put it back to the original position. We had a big group so one table was 8 adults and the other was 9 kids, ages 8-17. The waiter yelled at the kids when they took too long to order, told them they could only get only one drink at a time, apple juice or milk, not both. When we, adults, asked him for his recommendation for what's good on the menu, he chided us and said, "everything is good, just pick one." Took the kids to play basketball, 2 balls were flat, and another one was falling apart, with a flap on one side. Luckily another kid brought his own ball so we were able to shoot around with him. The Piazza eatery next to the café was just so-so. When we asked for them to heat the sandwich/pannini, the cheese didn't melt and the meat was cold. Just the opposite of Crown Princess. There are more, but these are some of the things that turned us off. No matter if it is 3pm or 10pm, the room service line was always busy, average wait time to get through was 22 minutes (7 calls between our cabins). That's ridiculous. The first day in Cabo, the tendering process was a fiasco. they started at 1pm. we got their at 1:30pm to get our tickets. We were finally able to go aboard at 2:55pm. Everytime we asked, they said nobody had to wait longer than 30 minutes. Our group and several other people pointed this out to the cruise director that our wait had been over an hour. He didn't apologize but just stated that they needed to get people with excursions on shore first and that we just needed to wait until our numbers are called. Needless to say, we will avoid the Ruby Princess in the future.